JUL / AUGUST 2025
THE GREYTON POST
23
The Spy Who Came to Town
Cape Flats-reared David, a veteran of underground anti-apartheid political activism and now a relative newcomer to crime intelligence work in the new police structure, found himself deeply immersed in what became a six- year mission that initially foundered but ultimately succeeded by 2001 in stifling Pagad, its violent enforcers known as the G-Force, and its ideological instigators, then known as Qibla. During the evening at Greyton Books David, now an independent security consultant and analyst with international connections (he and his wife and two children live in Germany), recalled those underground years, bringing the events and characters to life again in his retelling of insider knowledge that until now has not been known to most South Africans. It is a story, he says, “of six intense and dangerous years spent at the coalface of the struggle to neutralise Pagad, bring its terrorist campaign to a swift end, and bring its perpetrators of murder and mayhem to justice”. * David and his wife found Greyton “by accident” during a road trip and have happily returned several times. He assured his audience it would not be their last visit.
Kevin Jacobs
I t was a cool autumn evening in Greyton when a spy came in from the cold, without a cloak and no visible dagger. Armed instead with a disarming smile and a mental vault of fascinating memories and experiences, David Africa came to town early in May to promote his tell-all book. It finally lifts the covers off his years as an underground state intelligence operative during South Africa’s turbulent infancy as a newly democratised country. Lives On The Line, is a 320-page recollection of his dogged (and successful) underground operation that undermined and brought down a serious criminal and ideological threat to the security of the new government. Many in the audience at the function organised by Greyton Books at Maanskyn still remembered the events at the heart of the story (or, at least, the news publicity at the time): the activities of the Cape Flats-based organisation that called itself People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) in the 1990s. Pagad, parading itself as a concerned civilian-driven movement tackling criminal gangs and their illegal drugs industry, initially secured considerable public empathy and support. But that changed, suddenly and violently, on Sunday 4 August 1996. The public mob-murder by Pagad supporters of prominent gangster Rashied Staggie outside his house in Salt River, Cape Town, marked the start of a grim new chapter of urban terrorism, backed by anti-state ideology, and a new focus for covert crime intelligence agent David Africa.
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